Fall 2017 JPI

However, China does not own a global strategy to compete with the world order of the US.
With China’s economic miracle, the China threat theory emerged. In 2011, famous Chinese scholar
Jisi Wang published an article to reply to the China threat theory and pointed out that China did not
form a grand strategy because Chinese “foreign and defense policies have been remarkably consistent
and reasonably well coordinated with the country’s domestic priorities and China did not disclose any
documents about its grand strategy.” 24 Thus, we could find that instead of forming a global strategy
to threaten the existing world order, China’s action at that time merely was to figure out its global
position and the way to suit Chinese domestic interests. The domestic interests included the quality
of life for Chinese citizens, increased economic development, and an international reputation. All of
these domestic interests actually demonstrate the Chinese ambition to get rid of the 100 years of
humiliation and to achieve status as a developed nation. Thus, these domestic concerns have no
connection to Chinese hegemony because they mainly concentrate inward instead of outward.
After President Xi came into power, the topic of Chinese global strategy became popular again.
With the One Belt One Road (OBOR) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), China is
once again seen as the possible challenger. However, none of this can create a potential to challenge
the American global system. First, it is impossible to consider the AIIB as a global strategy for China.
Although the AIIB has successfully drawn people’s attention, it is still only a financial institution within
the American system. The creation of the AIIB will be likely fill some gaps of the existing system with
more focus on infrastructure. The AIIB not only applies methods similar to the Asian Development
Bank or the World Bank to invest in various projects, it also cooperates with the existing institutions.
“The AIIB and the World Bank have co-financed five projects, supporting power generation in
Pakistan; a natural gas pipeline in Azerbaijan; and slum upgrading, dam safety, and regional
infrastructure development in Indonesia.” 25
Compared with the AIIB, the OBOR seems more like a global strategy. China may have
ambition to develop the OBOR as one of the cornerstone for its global ambition. According to the
report of PwC, the OBOR will mobilize up to “1 trillion US dollars of outbound state financing from
the Chinese government in the next 10 years, which is considered to be a way to reform the structure
of its own economy.” 26 But the reality is that after it was created in 2013, China has not formed a
global network in the last four years. Many countries are interested in the project but no one clearly
understands where the project will lead. As a result, several bilateral cooperation treaties have been
signed although the OBOR was planned to be a global and multilateral initiative at the beginning.
Even though we assume the world will welcome the OBOR projects one day, China still needs a long
time to form its global influence through this ambitious, but unclear, initiative.
All-in-all, after careful examination, we see that China cannot be considered as a real challenger
to the US hegemony because it is only a rising power under the world order of the US. First of all,
China enjoys the status quo in the existing global economic system, and, consequently, China lacks
the capability and the incentive to create an alternative model of economic development. Second,
China has no security alliance system to provide enough military power to become a challenger to the
US hegemony. Third, without a global strategy, China does not own a potential international initiative
24 Wang, “China's Search for a Grand Strategy: A Rising Great Power Finds Its Way,” 68.
25 World Bank and AIIB Sign Cooperation Framework, World Bank, Last modified April 28, 2017, http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/pressrelease/2017/04/23/world-bank-and-aiib-sign-cooperation-framework.
26 PwC’s Growth Markets Centre, China’s new silk route: the long and winding road, 4.
JPI Fall 2017, pg. 48